“In the movie industry, content piracy is the boogeyman, and
DVDs aren’t completely trusted. There are three kinds of film
companies: those that resist DVDs and aren’t putting their
libraries onto the format; those who’ve jumped onto the format; and
those on the fence, slowly testing the waters. Steven Spielberg’s
bad movies are on DVD, but Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jaws sure
aren’t.”
“Bizarrely, the MPAA doesn’t seem to understand its own
technology. It is touting the DeCSS case as an anti-piracy issue,
which isn’t exactly right. The CSS on DVDs only prevents
playback. You can still create a bit-for-bit copy of the
encrypted DVD and then play it on a licensed DVD player. It just
happens to be economically unfeasible to do this — at the moment.
DVD films would quickly fill today’s hard drives, and DVD blank
media is around $40, so it doesn’t make sense to spend $40 to
pirate The Matrix if you can buy a legal copy for $18….”
“The DVD player — the thing that got cracked — has a license
fee attached to it. Right now, it’s $5,000. But perhaps the
thinking is that as the blank media capacity increases in capacity,
the movie industry will accept a certain level of piracy because
they’ll make their money in DVD player licensing fees.”